EVANSTON — Perhaps some of the pregnant women left bereft by the closing of labor and delivery services at Evanston Regional Hospital on Dec. 30 will find solace in the fact that Uinta County is blessed with three qualified and trained midwives: Marie Adams, Hope Henderson and Jana Hartzell. The combined years of experience of the three women total more than 37 years.

The longest reigning midwife in Evanston is Adams, who began her practice in 1994. At that time, Adams said, Wyoming had a gray area around the legality of midwifery. There was a law that said women had the right to have a baby where and with whom she wished, so it wasn’t really illegal to practice midwifery. In 2010, however, midwifery was legalized in Wyoming but the practioner had to be a graduate of an accredited school.

All three of the midwives are graduates of the Midwife College of Utah, with Adams graduating in 2013 after graduating earlier in 1994 from the Community College of Midwives. Henderson graduated in 2017 and Hartzell in April of this year. The Midwife College of Utah is the longest continuous midwifery school in the U.S.

Adams has delivered 400 babies over her 30-year career and travels to patients’ homes in Kemmerer, Rock Springs, Bridger Valley and Evanston.

“A midwife is strictly just a specialist in normal births,” she said. “If things become abnormal or there is a risk, we refer [patients] to a hospital. We are trained to handle emergencies like a baby not breathing or a woman hemorrhaging, and for that we use the same drugs as the hospital would.”

Adams said a new drug, TXA (tranexamic acid), used by the World Health Organization, has been approved, and pregnant women in rural areas are advised to carry it in case of hemorrhaging.

If the birthing mother requests it, all three midwives use a birthing pool, which Adams refers to as the “midwife’s epidural.”

Henderson said the best part of being a midwife is giving women the space to no longer feel afraid. They become empowered and excited about giving birth.

“The birthing woman is in control,” Adams said. “If she needs help, I’m there to help. I try to be the midwife I wanted when I was giving birth. Women should be able to have their baby at home safely.”

Hartzell said, “The best part is the babies. I helped to deliver 55 babies while I was in school in Utah, and those were moments I will never forget — and empowering the mother is best of all.”

Adams said she was in pre-med as an undergraduate and, after taking a medical sociology class and finding out that there was a high suicide rate among doctors, she changed her plans. She married and worked for the Forest Service and as a substitute teacher for a time.

After giving birth to her second child with a female doctor who was more like a midwife, Adams said, she began to become interested in giving other women that same good experience giving birth naturally.

“I wanted all women to have that feeling of empowerment that I had with my second birth experience, so I began investigating becoming a midwife,” she said.

Henderson became interested in becoming a midwife when she served a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Peru and saw women taking care of women during the birthing process and how comfortable and peaceful the mother giving birth was. She already had an associate’s degree from Western Wyoming Community College and later earned her bachelor’s in midwifery. She is also accredited through the North America Association of Registered Midwives. In 2022, Henderson opened an office at her father’s (Dee C. Dillree, DC) Evanston Chiropractic Center.

Hartzell joined the Army Reserves when she was age 17 and served for 11 years. She and her husband, Casey, have three children and she has been a surrogate mother for three more babies. She became interested in midwifery through a friend in the mother’s group she attended when she was pregnant with her third child.

All three midwives provide pre-natal care, birth and post-partum care for both mother and baby up to six weeks and then they refer patients to a pediatrician. If there are any complications during birth or after, all three midwives refer the patient to a medical doctor.

Hartzell and Adams accept Medicaid and insurance and will offer a payment plan. Hartzell also offers a sliding scale fee based on income. Henderson does not take Medicaid at this time but accepts insurance and also offers a payment plan for those without insurance.